


can't find the reasons for your actions (or I don't much like the reasoning you use)

by calcliffbas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Badass Suki (Avatar), Episode: s03e14-15 The Boiling Rock, F/M, Gen, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26482915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcliffbas/pseuds/calcliffbas
Summary: “What are you doing?”“Um,” he says dumbly. “I’m bending to keep the fire going. So we don’t crash.”“Not crashing would be preferable,” she replies.Suki and Zuko talk during the escape. She still doesn't know why he's here, but she thinks she gets it anyway.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Suki & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 196





	can't find the reasons for your actions (or I don't much like the reasoning you use)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Dire Straits, 'One World'.

Judging from how Sokka has spread himself out on the floor like a starfish, and the big Water Tribe guy – Sokka mentioned his dad? – and Chit Sang are mumbling something about whether the Boiling Rock was really _that_ escape-proof, Suki guesses this is the part of the journey where the adrenaline crash comes in.

And she’d be okay with that, so long as it’s the _only_ crash that their journey involves. Five of them got on this airship, and she’s here in the cabin with three of them who are looking pretty tired. Zuko (Prince of the Fire Nation? _What?_ ) was put in charge of the engines and the fuel tank, so he’s the one keeping them up in the air right now.

Suki’s had three experiences with Fire Nation royalty. In the first, Zuko kind of burned down her village. In the second, Azula and her thugs overpowered her and she ended up in prison. So far, so straightforward. The third _did_ involve Zuko breaking her out of the Boiling Rock, yeah, but it also had the small matter of Azula trying to knock them off a gondola into a hundred-foot drop into a boiling lake.

And Suki isn’t sure whether the end result would have been death by brute force impact or death by being burnt alive, but either way, the common theme was maintained, and she’s now three-and-oh for Fire Nation royalty being major inconveniences. She’s not keen on a fourth time now.

And so it’s a mixture of distrust and self-preservation and that all-pervasive sense of _responsibility_ that Suki has felt since she first took point with her warriors at the age of thirteen that sends her looking to check up on Zuko. She can’t understand what he’s doing here, and she’s not sure what to make of him. So this is her chance to shake him down.

She’s also not sure whether he’s fallen asleep or whatever, but she’s ready to shake him back into wakefulness if that’s what it takes.

But no, he’s awake, standing there and looking intently at a whole ton of valves and dials and buttons and levers that she immediately gives up trying to make head nor tail of. It hadn’t been her job to know how to fly the airship – it was just her job to make sure _someone_ flew the airship.

Suki’s been a leader for a long time – if she _doesn’t_ have a job to do, or something to make sure of, she always feels a little off-kilter, somehow.

“The others are resting,” she said.

“ _Guh!_ ”

Not as off-kilter as a startled Zuko, apparently, she noted, as he spins around and almost overbalances as he slams an elbow into the side of the furnace.

“ _Ow_ ,” he mouths to himself, rubbing his elbow gingerly.

When he looks up at Suki, she cocks an eyebrow and folds her arms. “What are you doing?”

“Um,” he says dumbly. “I’m bending to keep the fire going. So we don’t crash.”

“Not crashing would be preferable,” she replies.

Zuko fidgets and scratches at the back of his head. “Right, yeah. Because – otherwise we’d crash. That would be bad.”

The last time Suki had seen the Prince of the Fire Nation, he had been launching her into a wooden support with some weird spinning firebending kick. So it’s sort of gratifying to see him so antsy.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says slowly. “But isn’t _bad_ kind of – I don’t know. Your _thing?_ ”

And okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh for someone who’s just broken her out of prison. But, whatever, Suki wouldn’t have been in that prison if his sister hadn’t been tracking down the Avatar, which, as far as Suki could remember, was Zuko’s _whole deal_ back on Kyoshi.

Kyoshi might be neutral, but Suki appreciates the importance of alliances. The enemy of her enemy is her friend, she gets that. But the enemy of her friend (boyfriend – remind her to give Sokka a _big thank you_ for busting her out of prison!) doesn’t get away without any questions being asked.

But Zuko coughs and runs his hand through his hair. “Uh, yeah. It was. My thing. I thought I was good before, but, uh, I was bad. But, uh, like I said to – or, didn’t say to them, I guess – I’m uh. I’m good now?”

Suki doesn’t know whether the dials by the furnace door are measuring the pressure of the heat in the furnace or whether they just record the fluffiness of the clouds outside the airship or whatever, but the way Zuko is focusing on them makes her think that they’re either the most vital details this airship has to offer, or he’s embarrassed.

And, you know, _good_. He _should_ be embarrassed. About the whole burning her village down part, yeah, but also – he just _said_ that?

She can’t resist letting the awkward silence hang for a few seconds before nodding in an exaggerated fashion. “Right. That clears everything up.”

“Oh,” Zuko lets out a breath. “Good.”

She snorts. “Yeah, no.”

“What?”

“I was being sarcastic,” Suki informs him, folding her arms.

He deflates. “Oh.”

“Because that actually didn’t clear anything up.”

“Sorry?” He offers weakly.

Suki likes making a game of training sometimes. She and the other girls will play chase across the island, testing their stealth and speed. The loser usually has to clean up after training for the week. She likes swimming – at least in the shallows – and when Giya starts singing, she usually joins in.

She’s a warrior, but she’s a girl, too. And she likes that about herself. But here, now, with the Prince of the Fire Nation, she feels like she needs to remind him that he’s not the one who took the out warden single-handedly, and she is _not_ someone to mess with.

_Unagi’s going to eat well tonight._

Maybe she’s having a little fun. She likes to think of it as reasserting her natural leadership skills.

Suki opens her mouth to say something, but Zuko turns back towards the furnace and opens the door. She just about registers the heat in the time it takes Zuko to punch a fistful of fire into the engine before he shuts it again.

“Sorry,” he repeats. “The engine burns coal, and it needs to be kept at a constant burn rate. Temperature fluctuations are – uh, they can be bad.”

“Right,” Suki nods. “They can be bad. But they can apparently also be good, now. _Uh_.”

Zuko winced. “I just – thought you’d want to know.”

“Why would I want to know that?”

Suki is from the Earth Kingdom, and she’d never seen an airship before Sokka hurried her onto this flying _deathtrap_ that had apparently belonged to Azula. The thought of stealing the Princess’ toy appeals to her, of course, but the logistics of _flying in a metal deathtrap_ is _not_ something Suki wants to think too hard about.

“Because, um. Katara likes to keep an eye on me when I’m – doing stuff. That’s why you’re here, right?” Zuko asks, risking a hasty glance in her direction before ducking his head again.

“Actually, I was here to make sure you hadn’t fallen asleep,” Suki says. “But it’s really encouraging to hear that Katara thinks you need a minder to make sure you don’t betray everyone.”

Suki’s a Kyoshi Warrior. She’s very good at body language. Her entire style is about using the enemy’s strength against them, and so she can read an opponent’s every intention in the faintest roll of their shoulders and the slightest shift of their feet.

Even without seven years of training, the way Zuko’s flinch moves through his entire body would be pretty easy for her to read.

“Look, Katara’s – she doesn’t trust me. Which is fair. I, um – never mind. But you can trust me! I know I, uh. Burnt down your village. I’m sorry about that. I’m not that person anymore. I’ve changed. I _have_ changed.”

The way he repeats those three words – the rasp of his whisper, like the heat from fire, silent but fierce – makes Suki wonder who he was trying to convince, and why he’s trying so hard.

But she doesn’t need to know the history and geology of an area in order to scout it out. She just needs a topography, to know if she can trust the lie of the land.

“So what changed?” She asks, electing to go straight to the heart of the matter. “Why’d you join the Avatar? Why does Sokka trust you?”

Zuko chews on his lip as he checks the dials again. His scar twists his expression into something murderous, like he’s about to launch a fireball straight at the metal. Or at Suki. But that’s alright. She’s good at close quarters, and she didn’t let her training slip when she was locked up at nights in her cell. She can take him. Probably.

“A lot of things changed. But – I remembered who I am.”

Suki isn’t convinced. That’s not an answer to her question. “The… Crown Prince of the Fire Nation?”

“Yes,” Zuko replies, and she’s taken a little aback by the firmness of his voice. “ _My_ nation. My country. I _haven’t_ betrayed my country, I’m trying to _save_ it. That’s why I left. The war is hurting the Fire Nation, too, and if Aang is meant to restore balance to the world, that means he’ll restore balance to the Fire Nation, too. All I wanted for three years was to go home, but – I got home, and it wasn’t _right_. It wasn’t what I’d left behind. And I knew I had to leave to do the right thing.”

Suki wants to point out that the war has hurt a whole lot more people than just the Fire Nation, and if this prince had to wait for his own people to suffer before jumping in, he needs to start looking at the trees instead of the forest. She can’t respect a leader who only cares for what’s in front of them. But…

_I had to leave to do the right thing._

But Suki can respect _that_ , kind of. She doesn’t get it, of course she doesn’t – she slept on a floor until she was ten, she’s never had people bow to her before she’s earned that respect for herself – and she doesn’t pretend to understand the Fire Nation, where your honor is something others decide rather than something you earn for yourself, but she can understand _that_.

She can remember carefully tending to her fans at daybreak, before she had to stow them away and pack up a knapsack with two changes of clothes, a bedroll, a small box of makeup and paints, knowing that defending Kyoshi Island wasn’t _enough_ anymore. If the Fire Nation took the Earth Kingdom, Kyoshi was done for – so she went to the mainland, and she helped the refugees she could, and she rescued a sky bison and got thrown into prison for it, because she knows that _doing the right thing_ can mean leaving behind what you’ve known all your life.

And she knows what it’s like to realize that home doesn’t fit you anymore, like what you’ve learnt and what you’ve seen have seen this hermit crab grow too big for its shell, and now you’re searching for something new and that passion is a _rush_ because you know, _you know_ it’s the right thing to do –

But all the righteous fury in the world isn’t _home_. It isn't a roof to keep out the rain and four walls to keep out the cold. You just hope you can grit your teeth and tough it out from place to place, but none of them are _home_ like you want them to be.

And rather than say any of this, she cocks her head and gives Zuko another assessing stare. He fidgets under her scrutiny, and she’s gratified to know that she’s still the most intimidating person she knows.

“If Sokka trusts you, I don’t distrust you,” she says instead. “But if Katara doesn’t trust you, I can’t trust you. Even if you’re on our side.”

Zuko’s shoulders slump. “That’s – fair,” he mumbles. “I, um. Deserve that.”

“Right.”

There’s an awkward silence as Zuko keeps darting glances at the dials and Suki wonders how she got here. Three days ago, she was a prisoner. Three months ago, she was moving through the Earth Kingdom, helping wherever she could. Three years ago, she was _still_ struggling to move through the advanced _kata_ Min had showed her for her twelfth birthday.

“It’s good that you’re here, though,” she offers finally.

Zuko blinks. “Uh – it is?”

“Oh, yeah,” Suki nods. “I mean, no one else knows how to fly this thing.”

“Oh.” Zuko nods back. He tugs on the hem of his shirt and kicks at the floor. “Yeah.”

“So then we’d crash.”

"Yeah."

"So don't fall asleep," Suki reminds him firmly. Assertively, like a Kyoshi Warrior who had survived the Boiling Rock. "Or, again. We'd crash."

“That would be bad,” Zuko offers.

“Yeah.” Suki bobs her head. “Okay. Uh. Good talk.”

She turns around and marches out of the room, fully conscious of how she is turning her back on a firebender and trusting them to not launch a fireball at her.

“Okay,” she mutters to herself. “This is really, really weird.”

She hears a bitten-off cough (or was that a _laugh?)_ , and whirls around. “ _What?_ ”

Zuko holds his hands up quickly. “Nothing! Just, uh – Sokka said the same thing. When I joined. I just thought, you know. It was funny. Not that I’m laughing at you. I just –”

Suki isn’t in the mood for another one of his rambling _whatever_ word vomits, so she spins around and gives the dramatic exit another go.

That was… something. And she still can’t understand what Zuko’s deal is, but at least he’s awake and they’re not falling out of the sky, so she supposes that’s as good an end to their weird conversation as she could have hoped for.

And the thing is, she _gets_ it. Gets him, probably more than he does, because there’s no way that amount of _ums_ and _uhs_ indicates someone who’s competent at, like, _anything_ to do with emotions. He’s an awkward fidgeter with a weird stutter and, look, she loves Sokka but he can be a bit of an idiot sometimes, but if you can make _Sokka_ look like the sensible one, you’re probably not Suki’s first choice to teach the Avatar, the last great hope for the world, how to make _fireballs_.

But he left home to do the right thing, just like her.

And she _gets_ it. She might not understand Zuko, but she can understand having a pair of blue Water Tribe eyes break open your ideas of how your life should have gone. She can empathize with suddenly seeing that the world was so much bigger than what you called _home_ , and she still can’t figure Zuko out, but she suddenly feels like the pieces of the puzzle fit together a lot better than they did before she came to the engine room.

So she goes back to the cabin, where Sokka has shifted to prop himself up against the wall. He opens his eyes and blinks slowly at her as she settles her head in his lap.

“S’matter?” He mumbles.

“Nothing,” she whispers back, making a promise to herself that once they were both awake and entirely done with this extremely stressful prison break, she would reacquaint herself with her boyfriend, who looked _surprisingly good_ in Fire Nation colors. “Go back to sleep.”

“Oh,” Sokka yawns. “‘Kay.”

And that would be that, except for how he reaches his hand out and entwines his fingers with hers, and how she tugs their hands up to rest over her heart. And maybe a small island in the Earth Kingdom is a long way away right now, but maybe home isn't a roof and four walls anymore than it's a palace or a prison. Maybe home is where you feel safe, where you can rest and breathe, where you can lie down and the fury becomes _peace_ for a moment.

Maybe home is close enough to touch.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm realising I, um. I write Zuko's uh, awkward idiolect like everyone wrote TASM Peter Parker back in 2012.
> 
> 'Giya' is the name of a comics character who trains with Suki; Min is a popular Chinese name.


End file.
